Francis tries to communicate suicide by jumping on a grenade, but horribly disfigured his face, and comes home the hero who put his life before other soldiers.
At home before the war, Francis and Larry are also again very different. Francis lacks confidence and is very quiet and timid. Larry has lots of qualities you would usual associate with a hero, confident, brave, entertaining, multi skilled and a rapist.
Through these events we learnt that there is no specific definition of a hero.
Francis introduces himself in a very direct and shocking way. He builds a very clear and disturbing image of his face. He goes into personal details because of his lack of confidence, “bits of dangling flesh.”
At the start of the book Larry was like a role model to Francis, Slowly building his confidence involving him in rec.center, “come and join in” Francis became the table tennis champion all thanks to Larry who lets him win the final. As the book goes on Francis’s illusion of Larry is shattered when he rapes Nicole.
Near the end of the book when Francis confronts Larry with a gun this shows how Francis’s confidence how built through the book. By the end of the book when Francis meets Nicole for the last time he has learned that life goes on and that he should now forget about Nicole and move on with his life. Nicole has now forgave him and now his conscience is finally free, “I’m sorry for what I did to you that day.”
Francis now wants to forget about the war because of his terrible experiences, “I want to forget what happened there in France but every night the recitation begins” here he is telling us that he finds it hard to forget. He contrasts between silence and little noises, “The village is too still, too quiet, ‘Jesus’ Sonny Orlandi mutters” he is telling us that because of the silence all the little noises are mad much more important and meaningful.
Francis is very brave facing his disfigurement, he speaks as if in a conversation because he talks about the subject in a more light-hearted manner rather then being serious about it, “I haven’t always worn a scarf and the bandage” this shows he is being very open about the subject. Francis is treated differently by other people, “A small boy holding his mothers hand suddenly cried out and pushed his face into his mothers skirt” the writer uses verbs to show this. He also tries to put across the point that he is a normal person trapped in a disfigured body. Near the end of the paragraph the mood suddenly changes “Until the day I went on a three-day pass in London” the writer uses this sentence very effectively to turn the mood around from cheerful to a more sorrowful mood. Francis later on accepts Nicole’s forgiveness. Francis accepts her forgiveness then lets her go, “ ‘I’ve got to go,’ I say. My gift to her” here the writer is using very short sentences to make more impact at this important time in the book. There is also another important moment, “She reaches up and presses her lips against the damp scarf that covers my own lips” this is important because this is the first contact Francis has had with anyone. The writer makes you work to understand, “I see it in her eyes” the writer is not telling you what she said but makes you think to get the answer.
There is a big contrast between past and present in the book, In the past everything is looking good for Francis because he has his whole life ahead of him, and he is also friends with Larry. Whereas in the present Francis now hates life and also hates Larry. For the big climax in the middle of the story, the writer uses very long sentences broken up with lots of commas, “Hearing the small sounds, then a sudden gasp and the needle scratching the record as it went round and round, and I couldn’t breathe, my body rigid, my lungs burning….” the writer uses this type of sentence so the rape can be explained in detail. Rhetorical questions are used, “What were they doing?” this shows us that Francis doesn’t want to believe what’s going on. The writer uses sounds because Francis can’t actually see what’s going on, “gasp”, “moaning”, “whimpering” all these words help build a picture in Francis’s head. The end of the story is significant to the new mood, at the train station, showing the Francis is moving on with his life just like the train is moving on, this suggests a hopeful future.
Cormier’s message about heroism is that there is no one single definition of a hero, a hero could have many different good qualities, but also that nobody is perfect and where there is good qualities there always comes bad. No matter how many lives people have saved or people some one has helped, it is where you draw the line from minor bad qualities and major to deuterium if some is a hero or not.
